August 29th, 2014, 2:48 pm ·

· posted by CASSIE MACDUFF

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That’s the only way to describe the testimony before the Jurupa Unified School District board last week about special-education students digging through trash for recyclables as part of so-called “functional skills” training.

Parents and students choked back tears as they described the humiliation and embarrassment the children felt sorting trash in view of their schoolmates.

District officials have suspended the program and hired a consultant to sort through what went wrong.

But the damage is done.

The school district continues to feel the sting of TV news coverage of the blunder.

When I spoke to Superintendent Elliott Duchon on Tuesday, he continued to defend the program.

Special education students aren’t singled out to sort recyclables on campus, he told me. Football players, student service clubs and others also collect recyclables to raise funds for equipment, field trips and the like, he said.

Other districts use the same approach to functional-skills training, he said.

And the students are given protective gear such as gloves, aprons and grabbers to lift bottles and cans.

That’s not the point.

Having special-ed students sort trash has a different implication than allowing athletes and high-achieving students to do it.

That message came through loud and clear in the comments from a student, a former student and several parents at the Aug. 18 meeting.

As one parent scolded, “The message you’re sending is, you’re training them to be homeless.”

Exactly.

School board President Sheryl Schmidt gets that.

Although other districts also use recycling to teach special-ed students how to handle money, she told me Wednesday, collecting recyclables today is looked on less as an environmental good than as something homeless people do, as “dirty and dishonorable.”

Patriot High School graduate Arianna Lizarraga sobbed as she told the school board how she felt when a teacher made her pick up trash in front of other students, as she described it.

“I have been humiliated enough by everybody at that school,” she said, weeping.

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